Sunday, May 31, 2020

The Shutdown Sultan

The penultimate Keep Writing Challenge assignment is to write a 300-word story using the prompt "hex."

The Shutdown Sultan


The Shutdown Sultan surveys the landscape of Mindy’s mind. He has feasted and controlled here. For thirteen weeks he has reigned here. The once-lush valley surely lies spent and exhausted in the wake of the Sultan’s invasion. Surely the spark of creativity he forced from her is extinguished!

The Sultan’s eye lingers on the myriad colorful canvases littering the atelier of Mindy’s home. Landscapes, seascapes, field flowers (relics of the remembered Outside) dominate the room. Giant roses, tulips, lilies-of-the-valley, and poppies grow in abundance. Flowers of indeterminate origin, many cultivated only in Mindy’s mind, threaten to burst the walls. Colorful splotches and splatters mar the floor; half-finished and hideous abstracts dare the timid to enter. 

He sighs. A small doubt has pushed into his consciousness. Has the isolation borne fruit? Has the enforced creativity devastated as he intended, or has its hex turned on him?

Turning his back on the offending atelier, the Shutdown Sultan strides into the study. Surely here he will find affirmation of damage from Mindy’s hex-induced creativity. His attention centers on Mindy’s laptop, and hope reignites in his heart. The device languishes beside the reading chair, exhausted but maintaining a tight hold on the 70 little stories that bear witness to Mindy’s dogged adherence to the Keep Writing Challenge.

The Sultan scrolls through the vagaries of Mindy’s mind as shown in her fiction. She has visited far-off lands, enjoyed the company of family and imaginary creatures, found adventure, made friends, honed skills. She has lived in her words, her scenes, her stories. Mindy’s creativity has taken the Sultan’s restrictions and pushed her to write, compelled her to paint, forced her to pound the ivories.

My fortress was so strong!  He thinks. How can it be that a simple creature like Creativity subverted the power of the Shutdown Sultan?!

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